Symbiote Madness (Venom One Shots)

Everyone's Chilling! (52)

This is a long one get ready!

Eddie had never quite understood the appeal of wine. While he could toss a glass back when the situation called for it (network Christmas parties, fine dining events, a celebratory toast at jovial occasions), he'd never quite developed a taste for it. If he was looking to get buzzed, then beer did the job, and if he needed something a little more highbrow, then whisky in an expensive tumbler did the trick at black-tie dinners.

Unfortunately, Anne had developed a taste for wine somewhere between her second and third year of law school and had acquired a refined palate. During their relationship, she'd toss back a beer with the same frequency that Eddie would sip a glass of wine (which worked out to be once or twice every month), but since they'd gone their separate ways, that habit seemed to have dropped. As the dinner wound to a close and they retreated to the living room, he watched enviously as Dan uncapped a bottle of beer with an opener that was probably embedded with Swarovski crystals and took a thirsty gulp from it.

He'd been offered one. Of course he'd been offered one. Dan was far too polite to not have. But Eddie, still unable quite to gauge where he sat in Anne's good books, had turned him down and continued to nurse the glass of Recioto del-something-or-other. It didn't really matter, anyway. Ever since Venom had taken up home between his third and fourth cervical vertebrae, alcohol didn't effect him the same way. In fact, it seemed to have the opposite effect. While he'd remain stone cold sober, Venom would grow heavy and lethargic, as though he was being sedated.

The living room had changed since Eddie has last sat in there, comfortable in the place he had considered his home. Falling back on the couch, resisting the urge to toss his feet up on the coffee table as he once would have, he looked about the room. The décor had changed slightly, from the rich, red teak that Eddie liked to black, wrought iron with glass panelling. It wasn't bad. It actually read more like Anne than the teak had.

She was somewhere in the kitchen, either cleaning up, grabbing some kind of cheese platter, or perhaps just waiting for the tension between Eddie and Dan to dissolve. Knowing Anne, it could be all three of those things in varying degrees. Forcing himself to sip the strong red wine, Eddie eyeballed Dan over the rim of the glass and tried to mentally nudge Venom into alertness. The symbiote responded with a thoughtful snore in the back of his head, gave the impression of rolling over, and grew still.

Great.

'You know what story of yours I loved the most? The illegal fishing one. With the Vietnamese fishermen.'

'What?'

It took Eddie a moment to tune back into Dan. He hadn't originally wanted to come around for dinner. He and Anne had caught up a number of times over the past few months, after the Life Foundation and rocket and his acquisition of a certain alien entity had become nothing more than just a bewildering memory. Dan had appeared somewhere in the middle, at first just a few seconds or minutes at a time as he came to meet Anne after work or returned after a shift at the hospital. Eventually, though, Dan was there before Anne for lunchtime coffees and weekend strolls. Eddie tried to tell himself he didn't mind- and in actuality, he was finding he didn't. The problem with Dan was that he was so well meaning that it was almost infuriating.

'Yeah. The piece from, uh, four years ago, I think?'

'The one about the fishing restrictions?'

Eddie knew the piece Dan was referring to. It was a human interest story (as most of Eddie's had been back then). The local news had been covering the topic as though the immigrant men had been making some kind of massive cash swindle. Eddie, though, had framed it as would-be breadwinners struggling to make ends meet and trying to retain part of their culture. While there had still been those who had picked at his representation and demanded recompense, it had shifted the tide in the general public consensus and had even managed to get a few of America's newest citizens legitimate jobs on the docks.